


and i’m a goddamn coward, but then again so are you

by fangirl_squee, perrysian



Series: the ways of the old old wind blowing you back 'round [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Nonbinary Character, Other, Trans Character, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 21:58:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fangirl_squee/pseuds/fangirl_squee, https://archiveofourown.org/users/perrysian/pseuds/perrysian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire knocks into the most beautiful person she's ever seen, unfortunately they don't get along too well. Marius thinks about moves he could make, but in the end only thinks about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and i’m a goddamn coward, but then again so are you

R sees em the first time after four days of little to no sleep on the wrong side of drunk. She doesn’t know eir name, not then; all she knew was the way the sun hit that halo of golden curls and she was blinded for a moment. R’s fingertips itched for oils or aquarelle, something to capture that light and keep it safe near her heart and brighten up all the dark places.

Ey’re surrounded by people holding signs in front of the administration building, R’s eyes are watering too much to read what they said, and she was too drunk to make out what they were chanting, but whatever ey was shouting about R knew she wanted to believe in it, even when she couldn’t.

The second time R sees em she nearly bowled em over, portfolio and textbooks scattering across the floor, R pressed up against eir chest when ey reached out to keep her from falling instead of eir books and papers.

Dazed, R let em set her on her feet again, a little breathless. This close ey were even more stunning than ey’d been across the quad with eir hair glowing sunlight. The bluest eye’s R has ever seen peer back at her, and a soft pink mouth asks her if she’s alright.

R just nods.

The third time R sees em, eir giving a speech on fighting the government. It’s probably more complicated than that, but R’s slightly tipsy at the time and distracted by the way the light of the cafe makes eir golden hair seem to glow softly. R hears enough to know that while she doesn’t agree with her golden god on most points, she can certainly appreciate the passion with which they’re said.

She’s hardly the only one captivated, every person in the cafe seems to turn towards em like flowers following the sun. Even the cafe patrons and passers-bys stop what they’re doing to listen to em speak.

R learns eir name that day too; Enjolras. She would have thought Aphrodite would have been a more appropriate choice. Marius offers to introduce her, but R declines. She’s hardly fit to even be in the presence of a god, much less speak to em.

Still, she does go with Marius the next time he heads to the cafe. She might never talk to Enjolras, but R can certainly watch em speak.

Eventually though, she can’t ignore the fundamental disagreements she has with Enjolras’ speeches. Optimism about the human condition is one thing, but acting as though enough people will rise up to actually effect change? R hasn’t seen any proof that such a thing will ever happen, and if it does, she hardly thinks it will bring about the utopia that Enjolras describes.

Cosette and Marius both attempt to arrange for her to run into Enjolras after the meetings (although, really, hadn’t she done enough damage the first time?), but so far R has managed to excuse herself at the last moment.

Unfortunately, this does not mean she’s very good at keeping her thoughts to herself. She’s always had an unfortunate habit of saying her thoughts aloud, and her thoughts about Enjolras’ speeches turn out to be no different.

At Cosette’s insistence, Combeferre sits next to her during a meeting. Cosette claims it’s because she had wanted to continue a discussion with Combeferre, but R suspects that Cosette was hoping he would be able to prompt her into action. As with most things that Cosette sets out to do, it works perfectly. Combeferre hears her correcting Enjolras’ use of certain statistics during eir speech, and turns his head towards her.

“You should let Enjolras know when ey’re being incorrect about these things. The last thing we want is to be factually inaccurate during the rally,” he says, voice low.

R shakes her head, and does her best to keep quiet for the rest of Enjolras’ speech, but to no avail. Enjolras makes another reference to living condition statistics, that are two years out of date, which, really, is just sloppy. The correction is out of her mouth before she can even stop it.

Combeferre raises his hand to get Enjolras’ attention. “It has come to my attention that the statistics you’ve been quoting are incorrect Enjolras. R, perhaps you could tell Enjolras where ey’re missing data.”

So R does. Once she starts, she can’t seem to stop, and not just at faulty or incomplete statistics, she rips through Enjolras’ arguments, everything she’s been wanting to say for weeks but hasn’t been able to.

Enjolras looks for a moment as though ey'd been slapped, but R doesn’t get much time to feel sorry about that; Enjolras debates her on every point. Ey starts out slowly, almost hesitant to admit flaws in eir original arguments, but eventually eir voice takes on the same righteous tone ey have during eir normal speeches.

And well, R has never been one to back down from a fight, verbal or physical. By the end, it’s not so much about factual errors, but an opposition in beliefs. It’s hardly surprising to R that someone with such unearthly beauty believes that there is that much goodness in the world. R is certain that if anyone can inspire people to such great heights, it will be Enjolras. She just doesn’t think the people will be as good as their god.

“Well if you don’t believe in what we’re trying to do, why the hell are you even here? To drink and mock our cause under your breath?” Enjolras didn’t shout, but ey might as well have. “Why are you still here?”

And Enjolras couldn’t have known the effect those words would have, but they did all the same. R couldn’t say that she might not believe that the world would get any better, but she hoped Enjolras would be right that it would. She couldn’t say she came to the meetings because there, in Enjolras’ presence, for the first time in a long time, not everything felt so bleak and crushing, like all the bad wasn’t bearing down on her anymore. She couldn’t say that, so she just said, “Masochistic tendencies, I guess.” R packs up her bag and heads for the door. “No worries though, dear leader, I’ll get out of your hair now.”

If Grantaire was braver, she’d have spat back, or turned it around on Enjolras, but the fear of giving too much away had her headed out the door instead.

 

Cosette and Marius follow after her later, slipping out while Enjolras rants to Courfeyrac about hopeless cynics. Marius has to stop Cosette from challenging Enjolras on that, verbally and physically, although he almost wants to let her unleash her full wrath. Grantaire might be a cynic but she is not hopeless.

Marius follows Cosette to a tiny, hole-in-the-wall bar. Grantaire perched on a stool, running a finger around the rim of her glass. They sit down either side of her, and Cosette wraps her arms around Grantaire.

“Sorry I ruined your meeting,” says Grantaire. She’s not looking at them, focussed on the glass in front of her.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” says Marius, “One of the founding principles of Les Amis is that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, it’s in the club charter and everything.”

“Enjolras should be apologising to you,” says Cosette fiercely, giving Grantaire one last squeeze for emphasis before she lets her go.

Grantaire snorts. “Ey doesn’t really need like the apologising type.”

Grantaire refuses to leave the bar, and Cosette refuses to leave without Grantaire, so Marius order them a round. Grantaire smiles gratefully at him as she takes a long pull. It’s late by the time they get home, half-carrying Grantaire between them as she mutters about Icarus and Aphrodite.

“I think you’re mixing up your mythology a little R,” says Cosette.

Grantaire’s head lolls on Cosette’s shoulder. “Ey’re like all the gods, shining and golden.”

“Ey’re only human,” says Cosette.

“Humans can’t change things like ey’re going to change things,” says Grantaire.

They manage to maneuver her into bed, and Marius makes her drink an enormous glass of water before she goes to sleep. He goes to get another one for when she wakes up, and she’s already passed out by the time he gets back from the kitchen.

Cosette smiles tiredly at him, and kisses his cheek as she heads to the bathroom. “Thanks.”

Marius can feel his face go hot. “It’s just water.”

 

Marius knows he’s not the best with people. He says the wrong thing at the wrong time, he tends to ramble when nervous (or stop talking entirely), and his brain-to-mouth filter isn’t the best. He slips up on pronouns sometimes, especially on non-binary ones, and he doesn’t always catch them. He’s doesn’t have the amount of poise everyone else seems to have, and more often than not, he trips on air or himself, rather than anything else. And that’s on a good day, when theres nothing ramping his nerves up to eleven.

Cosette makes him nervous. Very nervous.

He spills his cereal every morning, because Cosette stumbles out of her room to have coffee before her shower. He trips over his own feet in the afternoon because Cosette is lying on the couch, reading or watching tv. She smiles at him, and every thought flies out of his head. He almost considers carrying around notecards, but he’d almost certainly drop them (and then, knowing his luck, they’d catch on fire somehow).

His nerves get so bad that he can feel himself start twitching whenever they’re in the same room together for too long. Cosette starts giving him strange looks, which of course, only makes it worse. Marius feels like he should say something (like “your hair looks like spun gold in the morning sunlight” or “you have really beautiful handwriting” or “will you please go on a date with me?”), but then Cosette looks at him and smiles and he feels like he can barely breathe, let alone words coherent sentences.

They’re watching a movie, the three of them crammed together on the two-person couch. Thankfully R is sitting between them, so Marius is half-able to concentrate on the movie enough to follow R and Cosette’s commentary about it. After a particularly large explosion, R stands.

“I’m going to grab another beer, you guys want anything?”

“I’m good,” says Cosette.

Marius just shakes his head. He keeps his eyes on the screen, but he can see Cosette looking at him out of the corner of his eye. He bounces his leg up and down, a nervous habit (one of many).

“Hey,” says Cosette, putting her hand on his arm, “are you okay?”

Marius tenses, trying to keep as still as possible (it doesn’t work of course, he’s just tapping his fingers against the arm of the couch instead). “I’m fine.”

Cosette frowns, but moves back.

Marius starts bouncing his leg again.

R raises her eyebrows at him as she enters the room. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” says Marius. His voice possibly comes out a little too high-pitched.

Grantaire sighs and, instead of taking her place on the couch, sits on his lap.

“Get off me!” Marius squeaks.

R laughs. “Not until you calm down.”

It actually does help, even though it means Marius ends up leaning his head against Cosette’s shoulder to watch the movie while R leans over Marius to braid Cosette’s hair in between sips of beer. He almost falls asleep as the credits roll, listening to R and Cosette argue over the next movie.

He must fall asleep for a few moments because when Marius is aware again, the room is dark, and Grantaire has disappeared to her room and he can hear the sound of her white noise machine underneath the murmurs of the couple on screen. Cosette’s body is warm beside him, and if his heart rate didn’t quadruple at the realization they were alone, he would have slumbered on.

Sitting up entirely, he ran a hand through his sticky-up mess of hairdo and blushed when Cosette smiled and paused the movie.

“I thought I’d let you sleep. You seemed comfortable.”

“I was. You’re very, uh, comfortable to sleep on?”

Cosette laughed quietly. “I got that. Do you want to finish the movie with me?”

Marius looked down at his hands, splayed across his thighs like ghostly spiders in the low light. He debated staying, and putting his arm around her should, curling close together, how the plot would pull them towards one another through the end, how they would turn, simultaneously, when the credits rolled, and bump noses. How they would laugh, petering off, until… 

“No,” he croaked out. “I’m tired still. I think I’ll head to bed.”

Had he looked back as he exited, he would have seen the disappointed slump of Cosette’s shoulders. Instead, Marius slipped into Grantaire’s room, rubbing her back until she woke, groggy and welcoming, pulling his clothes from his body, with fumbling, tired hands. They curled together under the duvet, Marius wrapped around Grantaire and Grantaire wrapped around Marius, her lips at his collar bones, whispering prayer or benediction or cursing his name he didn’t know, but slowly, slowly, his heart slowed, and his mind came to rest, and they slept, snuggled together, until Cosette woke them in the morning with breakfast in bed and a great warm smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Back on the writing horse! Come talk to either of us at antoinejeangros or fangirl_squee on tumblr!


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